GLASS FRAGMENT
Low Countries, c. 1600

height cm 14 (5,5’’); width cm 13,8 (5,4’’)

Raised on a low circular platform in a simple stone-walled workshop, two men stir yarn in a barrel of blue dye with long wooden sticks. The barrel is raised so as to make cleaning any spilt dye easier, and the niche cut into the wall behind may be a small basin for hand washing during the process.
The depiction of professions, trades, and specialisms in stained glass was well established by the time our panel was produced, and was further facilitated in the sixteenth century by the publishing of printed books such as Jost Amman’s Das Ständebuch (‘The Book of Trades’) in 1568. It is likely that our glass painter adapted existing designs from just such a source at the behest of a clothworker or dyer desirous to own images showing the various steps and aspects of his own profession. The panel’s size indicates that it could well have been made as a private commission and perhaps displayed in the dyer’s workshop as a form of advertisement, although it is similarly likely to have been made for the communal guildhall in a large civic centre.


PROVENANCE:
Sam Fogg Gallery.
Private Collection, London.